Dean Smith, The King Of Carolina Basketball

North Carolina's Smith had a fistful of wins, including this one in the 1993 NCAA final against Michigan. AP View Enlarged Image

For Dean Smith, winning was a matter of keeping things basic.

And when the legendary University of North Carolina basketball coach retired in 1997, his 879 wins were an NCAA Division I record.

He also owned two national titles and a gold medal from coaching the U.S. team at the 1976 Olympics.

"My basketball philosophy boils down to six words: play hard; play together; play smart," Smith, 81, wrote in "The Carolina Way," with Gerald Bell and John Kilgo. "(Playing) hard meant with effort, determination and courage. Together meant unselfishly, trusting your teammates. ... Smart meant with good execution and poise, treating each possession as if it were the only one in the game."

Smith drilled those concepts into the Tar Heels during practice.

Passing The Test

"We expected our team to execute well and with precision. If we practiced well and learned, we could play smart. It was another thing we could control," he wrote.

Building a team takes patience and planning, he noted: "We went through the process step by step, no shortcuts. We repeated drills until good habits were established. We stressed sound fundamentals."

Smith's Keys

Won two national titles and an Olympic gold medal on the way to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Overcame: The pressure of college athletics to win by any means.

Lesson: Always stick to your principles.

"Winning was important to us. ... But when we did our best and lost, we accepted it, congratulated our opponent and worked hard to improve."

Billy Cunningham, who played for Smith before coaching the Philadelphia 76ers to a National Basketball Association title, told IBD: "Dean's practices and everything were so organized. He was so into details, such as precisely where you're suppose to be in every situation on the court. He didn't allow those things to ever slip by."

Another former Smith player and current Denver Nuggets coach George Karl said his old Carolina mentor "would never tolerate any type of selfish basketball behavior. Very seldom did he allow someone to miss an open man. He would stop practice and say, 'That man, he has to get the basketball.'"

Smith, whose coaching reign at North Carolina ran from 1961 to 1997, retired after winning 78% of his games and capturing the 1982 and 1993 NCAA championships.

Smith was named national coach of the year four times and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.

"The most important thing in good leadership is truly caring," Smith wrote. "The best leaders in any profession care about the people they lead, and the people who are being led know when the caring is genuine."

Antawn Jamison knows. The former Tar Heel who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers said, "Even though he was a great coach, Coach Smith was a great human being as well. He cared about his players. Not just how they performed on the basketball court, but how they performed in life."

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